QA Manager for Zegeba’s digitalization platform

The Ålesund company Zegeba has developed something most companies and organizations need: a digitalization platform based on digital forms that can be filled out on phones and tablets out in the field and downloaded to the main office when there is an Internet connection available. The office will almost immediately receive figures, graphs and reports on the incoming results, and save a lot of time and work compared to using regular paper forms.

Video teaser for Aalesund opera choir

I’ve sung in our town’s opera choir for 30 years, at times helping with PR and design. For the choir’s production of The Maical World of Disney in 2017 I made a 1 minute video teaser based on footage from previous performances. The teaser is designed for Social Media distribution, especially Facebook and Instagram. I wanted to test out Adobe’s simplest video creation tool, Adobe Spark. This is an online tool with a few nice templates, but it does have its limitations. You have to use the same soundtrack throughout the video, and as I wanted to use clips from multiple songs I was forced to first compose a combined background track in another editor.
The teaser was first published as a regular post on the choir’s Facebook page. In the first 24 hours it got an organic reach of 1300 and was viewed by 650. Then I designed the colorful slides projected as a backdrop. Such a fun assignment!    (4.09.18, ed. 27.5.22)

Rom AS – presenting stylish interiors online!

Rom as – interiørarkitekter is a reputable Interior Decorating company in Ålesund’s beautiful Kongens gate street, catering for large clients such as  Rolls Royce Marine, the Devold Factory Outlet, Apollonia Dentists, Storfjord Hotel, Selstad, Fjord Shipping etc.  Lately I have helped Rom AS implement new technical features in the “background” of their web pages. I have installed the new security certificate SSL, updated back-up systems, domains and emails, and provided a hidden web area for them to try out new web designs. Google Analytics and Google Business have been installed, their visibility on Google is increased (through SEO), and we have discussed online marketing strategies. I have also helped them improve the speed of their slow Macs and internal network.  As you can see; a bit of everything, and a fun and educational job for me to do.

PS: Rom AS also design for indviduals (homes/cabins). Through their connections they may provide bespoke furnishings as well as stylish design products from producers such as Vipp, Brand van Egmond, Terzani, Harco Loor, Made by Hand etc. See their interior design products at Romshop.no! (29.05.18)

Norwegian version of the addressing system what3words

I have from 2015 until now been managing the Norwegian version of the award-winning addressing  system what3words. The London based company what3words has found a way to give every 3×3 m2 square around the globe its own name composed of 3 common words, such as index.home.raft. The system gives people in remote areas a fixed address, it marks the location of wells in the desert and indicates entrances to large buildings in major cities. I’ve been Language Group Coordinator for the Norwegian team and have set the linguistic style plus checked the 30,000 words to be used in the Norwegian addresses. A place name like table.stol.hurtig is easy to convey to e.g. a rescue team if you are lost in the mountains, and it indicates your exact location. While the Norwegian terminilogy base is complete, I am still active translating the what3words app into Norwegian as it continues to expand in functionality and user-friendliness.  (17/12/17, ed. 27/05/22)

The Incoming Travel Study Incoming 2017

In November 2017 Elisabeth in Heyerdahl Refsum AS published the survey Incoming 2017 on behalf of Virke – the Enterprise Federation of Norway, Innovation Norway, NCET Fjord Norway, the Trøndelag Tourist Board, the Northern Norway Tourist Board and HANEN. As a subcontractor I coded the quantitative part of the survey in SurveyMonkey with 15 main topics and a total of 273 questions. The responses were then processed in an Excel workbook with 61 individual spreadsheets. I created tables and figures, and contributed to producing the final report in Word and PowerPoint. This year’s figures were compared to our previous survey Incoming 2013, and gave some interesting results regarding the increase in tourism to Norway over the last 4 years. As far as we know, no other countries have conducted similar surveys among Incoming/Inbound tour operators . (17/11/17)

Website for the artist Amy Berg

Amy Berg (1917-2000) was a painter from Ålesund who lived a long life in the service of art, in many countries. She was a friend of my family and in 2017 I had the pleasure of creating a website presenting some of her beautiful works. I also have some paintings for sale on behalf of her sons in the United States, and I promote them on social media. The website is made in WordPress. Read more about her life on the website! (09/15/17)

Article about SKAM‘s global spread on social media

NRK’s ​​TV and web series Skam is not only popular in Norway and the Nordic region. During fall season 2016, the series shot in an Oslo high school gained millions of fans worldwide, attracted by Skam’s photogenic teenage actors and themes such as LGBT orientations and mental illness. I managed to find some incredible numbers for the series’ viral spread on social media, including many millions of Chinese fans! Prior to this report, it was not generally known that the series had gained a following outside of Scandinavia, and NRK expressed their gratitude to me for making them aware of this. While working on the report, my language nerd skills came in handy, with figuring out what trending Russian and Latin American SKAM tweets were discussing or understanding viewer statistics in the unique Chinese number system. The English version of my report is here.  Norwegian version here. These reports now have close to 4,000 views on the Medium site, partly due to links I posted on Wikipedia. (1.1.17)

PR and backdrops for “Disneys Magiske Verden”

As a member of the Aalesund Opera Choir PR Committee, I made posters, ads, press releases, Facebook posts, concert shows, tickets (!), backdrop slides, promo film and radio interviews for the choir’s own show production Disneys Magiske Verden staged in 2015 and 2016. See the video I made to promote the performance here. (4.1.16)

The Voice From Norway – a NRKbeta report on my Norway 2011 terrorism tweets

I spend some time on Twitter everyday, where I as @TheEliselise follow international news and post photos and news from Norway in English. In the fall of 2011, NRKbeta found that I was the one in the world who sent the most messages about the terrible Oslo and Utøya terrorism on July 22, 2011 – Norway’s 9/11, and they wrote an article about the reach of my tweets during those awful days. 77 young people were killed and hundreds maimed for life by a white man from Oslo. Many of the tweets I posted were English translations of Norwegian posts.  See the article here (Google translated to English).  (9.6.11)

Localisation and Project Management at Microsoft Worldwide Products Group

In January 1991 I began working in Dublin as one of the first two Norwegian localisers at Microsoft Ireland. The job involved translation and adaptation of software and documentation to Norwegian. At that time, Microsoft’s Windows 3.1, Word and Excel was taking over the PC world, and the Irish facility expanded quickly as software versions were needed in more and more languages. A few months in I was promoted to Assistant Project Manager for the localisation of what would eventually be Outlook, and I was put through the company’s various management training courses. The picture shows a box that I translated. This product was eventually not released on the market as IBM’s operating system OS / 2 quickly lost out to Windows. (6.1.92)